EU Criminal Justice and the Challenges of Diversity
Legal Cultures in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice

The volume examines how diversity in Member States' legal cultures is being addressed in the development of EU criminal justice.

Renaud Colson (Edited by), Stewart Field (Edited by)

9781107096585, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 September 2016

294 pages
25 x 15.7 x 2.1 cm, 0.57 kg

EU Criminal Justice and the Challenges of Diversity examines how questions of cultural difference between Member States' legal traditions are being constructed, addressed, and resolved in the development of the European Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice. The volume brings together leading socio-legal scholars and criminal justice professors from eight European countries and combines analytical approaches rooted in the social sciences with more normative approaches based on legal doctrine. It examines the construction of a common European criminal policy, explores some of the paths that may be followed by the EU in seeking to cope with national diversity in the field of criminal justice, and finally provides some insights into various forms of legal and cultural resistance offered by Member States to the European harmonisation process. In so doing, it bridges disciplinary boundaries between law and social sciences, and draws in a range of perspectives from around Europe.

1. Legal cultures in Europe: brakes, motors and the rise of EU criminal justice Renaud Colson and Stewart Field
Part I. Constructing a Common Policy: 2. Is there an EU criminal policy? Anne Weyembergh and Irene Wieczorek
3. The symbolic purpose of EU criminal law Thomas Elholm and Renaud Colson
4. Why some old dogs must learn new tricks: recognising the new in EU criminal justice? Marianne L. Wade
Part II. Dealing with Diversity: 5. Eurojust in action: an institutionalisation of European legal culture? Antoine Mégie
6. Legal diversity, subsidiarity and harmonization of EU regulatory criminal law Jacob Öberg
7. Managing legal diversity in Europe's area of criminal justice: the role of autonomous concepts Valsamis Mitsilegas
8. Dealing with European legal diversity at the Luxembourg Court: Melloni and the limits of European pluralism Lorena Bachmaier Winter
Part III. Resisting Harmonization: 9. Cultural barriers on the road to providing suspects with access to a lawyer John Jackson
10. Domesticating the European Arrest Warrant: European criminal law between fragmentation and acculturation Renaud Colson
11. What limits to harmonising justice? Chrisje Brants
12. Crimes, remedies and videotape: an unhappy encounter with EU Law? Estella Baker.

Subject Areas: Criminal law & procedure [LNF], International criminal law [LBBZ], Law & society [LAQ], Jurisprudence & general issues [LA], Law [L]